Constructivist epistemology and its philosophical backgrounds
Abstract
The article reveals the main content of the constructivist theory of scientific cognition as a new epistemological concept that is an alternative to the three dominant paradigms in explaining the nature of scientific cognition and its specifics: 1) the materialistic interpretation of scientific cognition as an adequate reflection of objective reality by consciousness; 2) the positivist concept of scientific cognition as a rational generalization of observation and experiment data; 3) the rational-a priori theory of the specificity of scientific cognition as the «unpacking» by consciousness and thinking of the content of general principles and attitudes inherent in sensory cognition and thinking, which are applied to the cognition of objective reality. Based on the history of science and the technology of modern scientific cognition, the article reveals the discrepancy between classical epistemological concepts and the actual history of science and its current state. It shows that the real process of scientific knowledge is best described by constructivist epistemology.